Prof. Dr. John Magee

Every year, approximately 50 Fellows are invited to work on their projects at FRIAS for 2 to 12 months in an intellectually stimulating environment. Fellows that have already been at FRIAS before can return to FRIAS for 2 to 6 weeks within the framework of the Alumni Programme, for example in order to finish a project. Furthermore, junior and senior researchers are regularly invited as guest researchers.

Our Research Focus profited enormously from the international team of Fellows and guest researchers at FRIAS.

CV

Born 1955, San Francisco, USA; 1978 B.A., History, Classics, and Music, University of California at Berkeley; 1986 Ph.D., Medieval Studies, University of Toronto; 1986-1992 Assistant Professor, Department of Classics, Columbia University; 1991-1992 Research Grant, National Endowment for the Humanities; 1992-1995 Associate Professor, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, und Senior Fellow, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto; 1994-1995 Research Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; 1995-1999 Associate Professor, Department of Classics and Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto; since 1999 Professor, Department of Classics and Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto; 2000-2003 Research Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; 2008-2013 Director, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto; since 2009 Associate Fellow, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto.

FRIAS Research Project

I am pursuing two research projects at FRIAS. (a) The first is the completion of a volume on Calcidius. From the prosopographical point of view, Calcidius is something of a phantom: a translator and commentator of Plato’s Timaeus who appears to have been active in fourth century CE but is otherwise unknown. His work was first translated into a modern language (Italian) in 2003, and then (French) again in 2011. I am completing a bilingual (Latin-English) edition, with notes and introduction, for the Dombarton Oaks Medieval Library, Harvard University Press. (b) The second project is a critical edition of Boethius’ first commentary on Aristotle’s Peri Hermeneias. Boethius wrote the commentary, along with his larger second one on the same treatise, ca. 513-515 CE, and it survives today in twenty-eight manuscripts of the late-8th through 13th centuries. The extant tradition is among the oldest of all for Boethius, which presents particular challenges and opportunites for the textual critic. With this text we have the clearest view of the fortune of Boethius’ works between the late-6th and 9th centuries, and one of the tasks is to extract from it Boethius’ earliest draft translation of the Greek original.